1. Profession: Maintainer

In today's business world, there is no such thing as "one" maintainer, but rather a number of different professions which, while all based on the same maintenance concepts, operate in different contexts and call on a wide range of skills. A maintainer is a technician in the after-sales service department of a supplier of technical, consumer or industrial goods (various machines, etc.), but also someone employed by a service provider who carries out maintenance on behalf of a user company, whatever its sector of activity. A maintainer is also someone who, as part of a company's maintenance structure, is in charge of production equipment or property assets.

Whether you're responsible for ensuring the availability of a refinery's continuous process production equipment, or looking after a hospital's technical installations, in both cases you're a maintainer. Given...